Apply for the opportunity to get in front of top-notch VCs, angel and corporate investors and high-tech influencers. The top 15 startups from this online competition will present on stage at Splash Oakland on May 6-7 in front of 1,000 attendees.

An overall winner will be crowned and chosen by a selection committee on May 7.

Plus the winner receives in-kind prizes worth $30,000, such as an Apple iPad Mini for two team members, one year free subscription to Rackspace, two-hour consultation with KPMG, first $100,000 transactions free of fees, courtesy Braintree, a video of your three-minute presentation on stage, a bottle of wine, a profile on VatorNews, and more.

To be a finalist, you have to apply to this competition, and go through two rounds. See the tab "Competition Rounds" for details.

Even if you don't make the top 15, all participants receive one 50% discount ticket off a general admission ticket, just for applying. To qualify for the competition, your startup must be under four years old and with no more than $2 million raised in outside capital.

Are you an East Bay or Oakland-based startup? You can also try your hand at the Oaktown Tech Startup competition and be recognized on stage. Learn more here.

Testimonials:

The Vator community and its Splash event provided the perfect launch pad to generate exposure for our health marketplace which connects consumers directly with providers who treat patients through traditional or alternative medicine. Winning the Vator Splash 2013 competition in San Francisco gave us the exposure, quality venture capital meetings and network effect every startup needs to initiate and complete a successful round. The very next quarter, we raised $4 million in our Series A. Thanks Vator!" Lisa Maki, CEO and founder of Pokitdok

This program has
2 rounds

Round 1

Round 2

Type:
Popular vote

Start date:
Tuesday, January 07, 2014 12:00 PM PST

End date:
Tuesday, April 08, 2014 03:20 PM PDT

Enrollment is open until Tuesday, April 08, 2014 03:00 PM PDT

Finalists: top 23 selected

Requirements:

Vator profiles are the applications for al Vator competitions.

That means, the profiles must be built out in order for judges to be able to evaluate and score.

This means: All founders and relevant team members (who you want us to evaluate) must have a Vator profile (filled out with relevant achievements that will wow investors)

Also, in order to earn bonus points for investors backing your startup, investors must confirm their involvement on your Vator profile.

We can't really judge a concept on a napkin. So startups must have screen shots or a video of their product/service.

Startups must provide as much information so judges can evaluate the companies on three criteria:

During this round, Vator applies bonus points based on the startup founders, backers (mentors, investors, board members). The more experienced the founder/team, the higher the probability of a greater score. The more high-profile investors, board members, mentors behind the company, the higher the probability of a greater score. The more high profile investors, entrepreneurs following the company, the higher probability of a higher score. The scores have corresponding vote points which will be given to startups throughout this round.

This round also allows participants to get out the vote. It's our way of democratizing the process so that entrepreneurs who may have never founded a company or who haven't raised any funds from notable investors just yet can still have a chance to show that he/she can build a following.

Voters are limited to one vote per Participant for the entire competition. Participants may vote for their own company. Vator and the contest organizers have the right, in their sole discretion, to take whatever action they deem appropriate to uphold the integrity and reputation of Vator, the organizer and the competition, including the right to disqualify companies, void votes, or recalculate votes, in the event of, but not limited to, multiple votes from the same user from different IP addresses, or votes considered fraudulent,
technical failures, errors or problems occurring with the site and/or Internet services, failure of judges to perform their duties, proxy voting or payment for votes.

The popular vote will determine about 20 semi-finalists that will move to Round 2.

Type:
Judges

Start date:
Tuesday, April 08, 2014 03:20 PM PDT

End date:
Monday, April 21, 2014 10:00 AM PDT

Vote weight: 0% popular vote from previous round and 100% judges.

Judging criteria

Team

Is the team relevant to the opportunity? Does the team have the expertise to execute and succeed? Do they have the key members in place?

Novelty and product/service

Does this product/service solve a clear market problem? Is it a new and novel approach to solve a problem? Is there enough differentiation that gives this idea a fighting chance against competitors? Is the actual product/service a good prototype/starting point that reflects the founding team's vision?

Commercial Viability

Is the market a big macro opportunity and a venture-backed business? Does this startup have a clear market niche and user group? Did they indicate clearly their go-to-market strategy to attract users? Did they clearly articulate their business model? Did they demonstrate how they will compete effectively?

Requirements:

Vator profiles are the applications for al Vator competitions.

That means, the profiles must be built out in order for judges to be able to evaluate and score.

This means: All founders and relevant team members (who you want us to evaluate) must have a Vator profile (filled out with relevant achievements that will wow investors)

Also, in order to earn bonus points for investors backing your startup, investors must confirm their involvement on your Vator profile.

We can't really judge a concept on a napkin. So startups must have screen shots or a video of their product/service.

Startups must provide as much information so judges can evaluate the companies on three criteria:

Managing Partner - Vator Investment Club; Early-stage startup advisor with over 15-years experience in business and corporate development for internet brands including Travelocity, Epicurious, Concierge.com, Wired and Style.com.

Howard Hartenbaum joined August Capital in 2008. Prior to joining, he served as a General Partner at Draper Richards LP where he was the founding investor in Skype and a former member of the board of directors where his achievement resulted in his joining the Forbes Midas List of top venture capitalists.

Before entering the venture capital field, Howard was at Hughes Electronics, where he was responsible for supporting business development, marketing and sales of satellite, information security and automotive technologies developed by HRL Laboratories. He also worked in engineering positions in ergonomics and user experience at Honda Motor Company and manufacturing at Teledyne Relays.

Howard has worked overseas for a total of ten years in Luxembourg and Japan. He is a graduate of M.I.T.

Manu is the Founder and Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures - a seed stage micro-VC fund that provides funding and support for tech startups in the San Francisco Bay Area. He previously founded, grew, and sold two successful startups. He was the Founder, President and CEO of SneakerLabs, a company which developed software and services for web-based customer interaction. After the successful acquisition of SneakerLabs (March 2000), Manu served as the Vice-President of Interactive Technologies for E.piphany. He then served as the Chairman and CEO of iMeet, a provider of web-conferencing services. After the merger of iMeet with Boston-based Netspoke (August 2002), Manu served on the Board of Directors of Netspoke until its acquisition by Premiere Global Services (August 2005). He holds a Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering with University Honors and a Masters in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University; and a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a Distinction in Teaching from Stanford University. Manu has invested in several technology startups including Lytro, CrowdFlower, Twilio, DNAnexus, CardMunch (acquired by LinkedIn), Zimride, BackType (acquired by Twitter), IndexTank and others.

Smack dab in the middle of the booming Bay Area tech scene, with Zappos.com entrepreneur Tony Hsieh as his next-door neighbor, Erik discovered his love for angel investing. He was among the first to invest in Zappos in 1999, which Amazon purchased for $1.2 billion. For the next twelve-years, Erik worked as a Merrill Lynch bond trader by day and an angel investor by night. Erik ultimately realized he could do more to change the world and spur innovation by investing in young entrepreneurs full-time.

Marcus is a Managing Partner of Quest Venture Partners, and is responsible for new investments, evaluating and closing seed / A rounds and working closely with management from portfolio companies. He enjoys strategy games and Greek mythology.

Chris has been on the forefront of emerging technologies since the commercialization of the web. Chris co founded the AdAuction, the first online media exchange in 1997 which was the precursor to the current auction based and dynamic pricing platforms in online media. Chris was instrumental in restructuring the businesses for Get Relevant (acquired by Lycos) and Aptimus (acquired by Apollo LLC). Chris co founded the first online independent yellow pages, OnVillage (acquired by Super Pages), the first online automated coupon platform, launched the first RSS ad campaigns, and helped develop the first peer to peer ad delivery system. He received Ad Age’s prestigious i20 award for his accomplishments in the development of interactive advertising. Chris has been a successful adviser and investor and he was an adviser and seed investor in Omniture (OMTR), the web’s leading analytics company. Chris currently serves as a director or adviser for 6 new media companies.

Mr. Surdi is a serial entrepreneur with a specialty in Marketing and Business Development. His interest in life changing, disruptive technologies is what attracted him to PowerBeam. Mr. Surdi firmly believes that PowerBeam has figured out what scientists have been trying to discover since the discovery of the light bulb and feels that wireless electricity will not only improve our current electrical needs but will spawn a wave of new inventions and technologies useful on this earth and beyond.

Mr. Surdi has extensive knowledge in the start up environment, has many entrepreneurial achievements and a great deal of experience in leadership. In 2002, Mr. Surdi launched an internet company called Phastcash.com which returned its investment in nine months. In 2006, he co-founded a company called Global Educational Program which is currently the premier firm providing Business Development for foreign executives and students in the Silicon Valley. He has also won a number of awards in entrepreneurship at both the local and national level.